Doctors ask Albany to act on speed cameras

Speed cameras are trained on traffic on Main St. in Flushing, Queens. (David Wexler for New York Daily News)

They’ve seen the consequences of speeding drivers — and want Albany to slow them down.

Doctors and top staffers at nine city hospitals fired off a letter urging state officials to pass an extension of the city’s speed camera program, which will expire this summer if no action is taken.

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“Our doctors, nurses and emergency personnel witness firsthand the suffering caused by speeding in our city — how it destroys lives and shatters families,” reads the letter, addressed to Gov. Cuomo, state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie.

“As leaders in the medical community, we believe it is our duty to publicly speak out about this preventable public health crisis,” it continued. “We have reviewed the data and wholeheartedly endorse speed safety cameras as a proven solution.”

The city has lost more than 5,000 lives to traffic crashes since 2001, the letter notes, and every day 200 people are injured.

Amy Tam-Liao (left) and her son want Albany to pass legislation allowing more speed cameras near schools.. Tam-Liao's 3-year-old daughter, Allison (in photo) was killed in an accident in Queens in 2013. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News)

“Yet we know these crashes can be prevented because other nations have made huge strides when the United States has not,” the doctors wrote. “In fact, numerous studies show that Americans now travel on the most dangerous roads in the industrialized world.”

In New York, fatalities are on the decline — in contrast to nationwide statistics. But the doctors argue that cameras are key to maintain that trend. The city is currently seeking to expand its speed camera program so it can use 290 of them, rather than the 140 in use currently.

“Right now, you have the opportunity to save lives and prevent unnecessary suffering by enacting legislation that will expand and improve NYC’s existing speed safety camera pilot program,” they wrote.

That legislation has yet to come up for a vote, in part because the head of the relevant Senate committee, Brooklyn Sen. Simcha Felder, has vowed not to move the bill unless his proposal of putting a police officer at every school is also passed.

The medical professionals sent their letter on speed cameras to (left to right) state Senate Majority Leader John Flanagan, Gov. Cuomo and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie. (Mike Groll/AP)

The letter was signed by Dr. Kurt Kodroff, CEO of Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center; Dr. John Marshall, vice president of medical affairs and chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Maimonides Medical Center; Lynn Richmond, executive vice president of Montefiore Health Systems; Dr. Raymond Wedderburn, chief of trauma and critical care at Mount Sinai St. Luke’s and Mount Sinai West; Dr. Rahul Sharma, emergency physician in chief at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell and chairman of the department of emergency medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine; Dr. Angela Mills, chief of emergency medicine services at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Columbia Irving Medical Center and chairwoman of the department of emergency medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons; William Hicks, CEO, and Dr. Spiros Frangos, professor of surgery and chief of trauma at Bellevue Hospital; Sheldon McLeod, CEO at Kings County Hospital; Dr. Nicholas Gavin, chief of service at the department of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Hospital-Brooklyn and Dr. Dmitry Karev, trauma medical director at the department of surgery, and Dr. Daniel Murphy, chairman of the department of emergency medicine at St. Barnabas Hospital.